https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/h...ighter-ham-radio-send-rescuers-sanibel-island This story presents ham radio in a very positive light, but it seems that the Garmin Iridium InReach was the real star of the show. -n9rvb
This is probably wrong. "How do you think the Cajun Navy gets their locations in order to rescue people? Often, it is someone communicating on a ham radio."
Do you speak from experience? I can. There are several organizations using the name "Cajun Navy". The two that I volunteer with seldom use ham radio with their operations. The majority of their communications are through the Zello app and Slack channels. As far as how they receive rescue locations, the majority come through social media channels and their websites. To say that "Often, it is someone communicating on a ham radio" would not be accurate. A better statement would be "Sometimes it is someone communication on a ham radio." That would be a more accurate statement based upon my real world experience.
I agree with you (and presume your reply is intended for the original poster, passing along an assertion in the article which I also challenged). We need to match our claimed capabilities with reality, and folks like the "Cajun Navy" can claim a lot more credit than ourselves for making a difference. That's why I questioned the wording in the article. Public relations efforts on behalf of the hobby have gradually gone from promoting past glory in showcasing many examples of how we used to provide emergency communications, to more recently overstating what reliance and results take place during a given disruption. I first became aware of the problem during Hurricane Katrina (summer, 2005), while trying to find and monitor actual exchanges between people needing help, and those beyond the disaster zone responding to such calls. Maybe my expectation was too high (then and today) that we would have people at various gathering & shelter locations, originating calls for help. One of the best cases in my recollection dates to 1983, when American medical students on the island of Grenada were stranded during a U.S. military invasion. They powered up an HF station on a generator and called into a south Florida net to pass along their status, their concerns, and stayed on for hours to receive guidance from the State Department as to what they should do. These days, you're more likely to find us on the fringe, outside the disrupted area without a lot to do. We have lost our place to other volunteers like the Cajun Navy-types who have far more to show for their efforts. Their participants don't seem to care much for the spotlight, and are humble and deflecting when great praise comes along via network news coverage. As a primary communications function, still using Katrina as a case study, instead of finding any information that HAMs were on the air via batteries, generators or other makeshift setups that could be considered the only means of messaging, I found reports of distress calls conveyed via cellular wireless, an eventual deployment of portable cellular facilities, and a wonderful profile weeks later of several telecom professionals who had established an ad-hoc wi-fi system to restore connectivity into the affected region. The hobby was pretty much shut out* but that didn't stop subsequent chest-thumping of what a great job we reputedly did. It was unseemly how certain groups bragged about Amateur radio's contribution in Katrina. For example, the ARRL commissioned an after-incident report that was submitted to the FCC. Readers at the link below will notice grandiose summaries of "served agencies," and details of stations/personnel that were deployed. But the report does not have a single, specific example that could illustrate just how and what was done by a HAM radio operator in this instance. You'd think an anecdote or two would be included from among all those people and dedicated resources, but there is nothing. https://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/docs/advisory/hkip/GSpeakers060306/ACT1045.pdf I've never been able to find any record of audio or video of any actual emergency communications during Katrina originating over Amateur radio. There's a YouTube video at the link below taken from a local television newscast of one of the many stations standing by for messages that never would come. That's the more typical scenario. At the end of the TV report is some long-form audio, with captions. We don't know if it was recorded by the same guy in the TV report. This might have been the nearest we got to an example of making a difference. A station (KA1FFO, who is not in the region) somehow obtained a message from FEMA in Nashville Tennessee (also not in the disrupted region), and passed a request over our HF for law enforcement needed at a New Orleans hospital. The request is said to have originally reached FEMA via 911. We can presume someone at the hospital used their cellphone for that initial connection with an unspecified 911 operator, who in turn conveyed it to FEMA. We don't know why or by what means KA1FFO had received the message from FEMA, nor whether FEMA sent that information by other means as well. There is a reference in that audio to a HAM net control relaying the request for police "over UHF," and I can hope that someone actually was able to get word to law enforcement via our resources that they were needed at that hospital. So, yes, the hobby can claim credit for a role in resolving that incident, but we don't know the outcome, nor whether they also got word by some other means perhaps sooner than us. In Katrina, I believe it was a lack of active licensees in the areas hardest hit by the storm and flooding that kept us from getting stations back up and running to originate calls for help and/or H&W traffic. And as a public relations function afterward, no one wants to draw attention to the fact other means of communicating are far more likely to take place. I feel like our EMCOMM role has been eclipsed by smartphone apps, texting, wi-fi, satellite-based telecoms, and what-have-you. We have to acknowledge that the infrastructure is far more robust and diverse than the old days of Amateur radio, its phone patches, and relay nets. * I would be delighted to hear from someone who has an actual documented report of message traffic originating from the area inundated by the effects of Hurricane Katrina. It doesn't matter much anymore, but with many years for any stories to surface, it seems there were few licensees on the air under emergency conditions. Even one or two instances that turn up now are NOT the comprehensive system we sometimes convince ourselves we can provide. Avoiding a misperception to the contrary is important to maintain our credibility with "served agencies" and regulators.
First, let me apologize. I thought that statement was your words, not quoted from the article that was linked to. Honestly, I saw that article a few weeks ago and when I clicked on it earlier this morning and saw the same thing, I didn't scroll down far enough to see that quote. I still stand by my comments about the Cajun Navy not using ham radio much, if any. I can speak about events during and after Katrina. I was born and raised in the New Orleans area. I lived in Harahan, a suburb of New Orleans in 2005. We moved to where I still live today in July of 2005 and Katrina was August 29. There's not many recordings of ham radio traffic for one simple reason, no one thought of recording any. The local AM powerhouse radio station, WWL, had non-stop coverage beginning a couple of days before landfall and for months after. I wish I had recorded some of those calls as Katrina made landfall and later when the levees started breaking. I don't doubt that there were many voices that called in the station that were never heard again. "In Katrina, I believe it was a lack of active licensees in the areas hardest hit by the storm and flooding that kept us from getting stations back up and running to originate calls for help and/or H&W traffic." There's lots of hams in the New Orleans area now and back in 2005. One big issues was that once the levees broke, it didn't matter if you had generators, batteries, wire antennas, etc. If your house was literally covered with water, you were not interested in anyone's health & welfare other than your own. Orleans Parish worked loosely with ham radio volunteers but the were never totally embedded in their emergency operations plans. Neighboring Jefferson Parish flat out said repeatedly before Katrina that they had no use for ham radio in their plans. St. Bernard Parish also had some hams available but like Orleans, they were not a major part of their plans. Where I live now, on the northshore of Lake Pontchartrain, St. Tammany Parish is a lot more welcoming to ham radio operators. The Ozone Amateur Radio Club in Slidell, LA has a few operators embedded with the local NWS office. Before covid restrictions, there would be a couple of our members that would man a station within the NWS office during severe weather events. Hospitals and EOCs are more welcoming to hams in St. Tammany Parish as well. As well as to the west in Tangipahoa Parish. There was a couple that stayed at University Hospital in New Orleans until they were forced to evacuate in one of the last helicopters rescuing people. This was a married couple who he was blind and she was wheelchair bound. They eventually relocated to TN after they lost everything in New Orleans. Here's a video that better covers what some hams experienced with Katrina. One operator, Mike King (W5PY) manned a station at a hospital for a long time, not knowing the condition of his own house. He's since passed, but was a first class operator. Within days of the storm moving through, one repeater in Hammond, LA was undamaged but brought back online with generator power. Bob Priex (WB5FBS), who recently passed, was running out to the repeater site to refuel the generator every so many hours. The only repeater that I know of that survived in the New Orleans area was the KB5AVY repeater owned by retired Dr. Roberto Dabdoub. It was located at the main campus of Ochsner Hospital and from what I was told, running on old batteries being recharged with a solar panel. None of the public service repeaters stayed on the air. In their infinite wisdom, New Orleans PD thought it was wise to have a system that was not compatible with any of the neighboring parishes. They were on an Ericson system while everyone else was on a Motorola system. There was a rumor that for some reason lines at a repeater site were cut by the National Guard, taking off the air Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office and also ham radio repeaters. I still don't know the truth about that, but I know all were off the air for months since building engineers would not allow any repairs immediately. It was a total cluster. Lots of people learned how to text message in the weeks after Katrina. Even that wasn't 100% reliable as texts would sometime reach the recipient hours after being sent. Strangely though, the Nextel PTT feature was working the day after Katrina was pretty reliable. Technology has greatly improved and along with a flood of federal money, systems have been upgraded and hardened - both government and ham radio systems. We are a lot better here since Katrina and still learn a lot from each storm no matter how big or small it is. We also have the ability to record radio traffic easier now and can also stream audio over the internet using Broadcastify, YouTube or many other methods. Personally, I want to start recording traffic from these major events in an effort to chronical these historic events. One of the many projects I have in the works. Here's some audio that is kind of hard to listen to. I don't think much, if any, is from within the affected area though. https://youtu.be/g5Io2Ayg-mw https://youtu.be/1-otebTDJFk I was able to find some audio out of MS from Katrina here: https://youtu.be/_GL86QxXB0o
Scott, thank you for filling in some essential information. I can now retire my Katrina example that, until your posting, helped illustrate how the hobby has lost its place in providing emergency communications. Not that the premise is wrong. I said I would be delighted to learn that there were some Amateurs originating emergency messages from the devastated region where Katrina struck all those years ago. You've done better than that: There's someone in one of those videos I have actually worked with. Robin Kemp. I will be messaging her that it was nice to see her. I will also ask why she has let her license expire. Thanks for the public service you, Robin, and the others contributed to the NOLA community. It's heartening, encouraging, and the cause for optimism that more recent participation elsewhere has also not come to light.
The request is said to have originally reached FEMA via 911. We can presume someone at the hospital used their cellphone for that initial connection with an unspecified 911 operator, who in turn conveyed it to FEMA. We don't know why or by what means KA1FFO had received the message from FEMA, nor whether FEMA sent that information by other means as well. I remember that day/night. Clearly. AL KA1FFO
